Many directors and screenwriters are fortunate enough to have their work pass the tests of various film festivals and critics to have their name finally known and thrown up onto the silver screen.
Reviews can make or break a movie- they can dictate who and how many people will see the movie. The Green and Gold have reviewed three different movies of different genres.
La La Land: In sunny Los Angeles, Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress, meets Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a jazz enthusiast. Throughout the movie, Mia and Sebastian struggle to keep their relationship together as their careers threaten to pull them apart. Though it may sound like another cheesy romantic chick-flick, it is far from it. In a stunning spectacle of color, dance, and song, director Damien Chazelle conveys a dazzling story of dreaming, life and love. Chazelle’s use of color, cinematography, costuming as well as his use of ‘one-take shots’ delivers a sense of wonder that was captivated in the musical movies of the ‘40’s. La La Land has broken a record for most wins by a movie with seven Golden Globes, receiving every category the motion picture was nominated for, including Best Actress in a comedy or musical (Stone), Best Actor in a comedy or musical (Gosling), Best Comedy Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Score (Justin Hurowitz) and Best Song (“City of Stars”). La La Land is a refreshing change– a musical movie with strategically timed scenes that keep the audience engaged in a day where action, sci-fi and horror movies reign.
Hidden Figures: Directed by Theodore Melfi and based on a true story, Hidden Figures is a film about Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), and Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), three women who struggle to both overcome society’s ideas about their race and serve their country through engineering and science at NASA during 1961. The acting was moving; Audiences can become very inspired by the characters and wanted to see them succeed. The costuming complimented the characters both physically and in personality and helped describe who the characters are, as good costuming should. The cinematography and lighting added to the story and was beautiful. However, Hidden Figures failed to take me out of the cinema and place directly in the story, and therefore not entirely filling its duty as a film. The romantic subplot was not necessary, as the audience was busy watching Mary and Dorothy succeed. It added nothing to the main plot. Possibly the writers wanted to provide possible emotional blows although the relationship wasn’t developed enough. Other than these two points, this was a very inspiring and thought provoking movie.
Passengers: In the distant future of space, thousands of passengers travel aboard the Avalon II in hibernation pods. These will keep them asleep until the last four months of their journey to a new colony on a new planet, the Homestead II. Passengers Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) and Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence) wake up 90 years too early, and quickly realize that the journey will last more than the human capacity of life. Unable to go back to sleep, Jim and Aurora seek the answers to why they woke up early. Although this film is very well made in the aspects of acting, set, special effects, and musical score, the writing is less than par. It is predicable, flat, and mediocre, quickly becoming lost in the genre, and morphing into a generic sci-fi. The ending was flat and did not feel connected, as the script contained no set-ups in order to impact the audience later. There were no points of tension, suspense or conflict. This film felt merely as though the audience was merely watching two people live a life from the outside, instead of being invested in the lives of two significant individuals who are inevitably facing death. This movie is entertaining and works for the common sci-fi dweller who has time to fill, although those who look for a deeper meaning in movies should probably skip it.
